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Four Shakespeare Songs, Op 30

Introduction

It must be admitted that the ‘Four Shakespeare Songs’ of 1933 are rather routine Quilter. Who is Silvia? has charm, but little excitement, and cannot compare with Finzi’s setting. When daffodils begin to peer is a reasonably cheerful spring song, though with no suggestion of Autolycus, the ‘snapper-up of unconsidered trifles’, about it; nor does it appear that Quilter understood the implications of ‘me and my aunts, while we lie tumbling in the grass’! Sigh no more, Ladies is appropriately cheerful, though with little individual character. How should I your true love know? is a different matter, its gentle modal inflections conveying the mood of sorrow shared with an emotional depth only matched by Quilter in his earlier setting of Autumn Evening. It is worth noting, in relation to the first verse, that cockle-shells were worn by pilgrims to the shrine of St James of Compostela, and that ‘sandal shoon’ are sandals, also worn by pilgrims.

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more;
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never:
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny;
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo
Of dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so
Since summer first was leavy.
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny;
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.